


tumbleweed anthems

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Desert Keith Week 2018, M/M, POV Second Person, Poetry, Sheith is pretty strongly hinted here but not explicitly confirmed, generally post-expulsion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-01 09:12:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: A series of poems for desert Keith week, focusing on Keith's search for answers after the Kerberos mission, and the way inhospitable, hard places can offer stark clarity and refining fire:"When it storms, you get the sense something is out therepurring like a wildcat in the desert. Maybe you’re going mad,but you swear it promises he won’t be gone forever."





	1. provisions

In retrospect, punching Iverson wasn’t the right play.

As far as you know, there’s only one way to get off this planet,  
and Galaxy Garrison holds all of the keys.

But you don’t have the patience for the long game.  
That’s what Shiro used to do; eyes-on-the-prize, steady.

You’re more like the campfires  
that you start from tumbleweed  
whenever you’re out exploring,  
attempting to heed that instinct  
which always insists that  
he can’t really be gone.  
You burn a little too quickly,  
all acrid, unsweet smoke.

Anyway, expulsion usually confers the blessing of solitude.

Usually, because every two weeks,  
you’re at a General Store  
ignoring a look that you think is  
half-sympathy, half-judgment  
from the lady behind the counter.

You exist on a kind of shoestring budget,  
with -- evidently -- unlimited tolerance  
for rice and beans, the bare necessities:  
just enough fuel to keep the fire of yourself  
burning just a little while longer. 

“Everything okay out there?”  
“Everything’s fine,” you lie,  
counting change.

No matter how many times you say it,  
you’re never going to believe it.

“Alright, hon. See you in two weeks,” she says, like it’s an obligation,  
some kind of pact that will keep you alive until the next time.

After this, you remind yourself, you still have to get fuel.  
There is a question song humming out in the canyons,  
and you think you might exist just to find the answer.


	2. wildlife

“Son, you’ve got a lizard problem.”

You bristle.  
You can’t help it.  
You’ve only ever been  
one man’s son,  
and that man is dead  
has been dead  
yet still the red maw  
of the universe  
clamors for more.

“Keith,” you say.  _ I’m not your son. _

And anyway, you like the lizards.

The lady at the General Store  
has sent her husband out with pie.

You’d like to hate it, but you can’t;  
it’s summertime, cherry season,  
and the sweet, sour tang of them  
clings to your mouth like a kiss.

A smart man once told you:  
__ Keith, you can have the spiders,  
__ or you can have the lizards,  
and you’ve chosen the lizards.

You explain this,  
but you don’t say  
_He was my father  
__and I miss him._

For that you wait until later,  
alone on your porch  
with the chirping of crickets,  
the scampering lizards,  
and sometimes, the call of an owl.

Just you, the wildlife, the stars,   
and the ghost of at least one dead man.


	3. climate

You like the extremes this place offers.

It’s one of the few places on earth  
that affords that crystal-clear,  
black-and-white sort of clarity.

When all you’re doing is surviving,  
all you tend to think about is survival.

Some days are sweltering;  
dry heat that licks your skin  
like your whole body’s been  
thrown through candleflame  
over and over and over again.

Those days have starkly cold nights,  
which always make you think.  
_ Is this what it would have been like  
_ _ out there in space? _

Maybe that’s another reason why you like it.  
Sure, you’re living on a dead man’s land,  
but the sheer inhospitability of the place --   
especially the fact that nobody else wants it --

Well, fuck it, you relate. It’s a value-add.

Some days start off clear,  
but then the storms roll in.

You can see them build for miles,  
giant, towering cumulonimbus clouds,  
angry, sickly-green supercells  
which always rip through this place  
like they’ve got someplace better to be.

The desert needs those infrequent, torrential rains,  
and so do you -- you’ve been caught in them before.

Before, out here, with him.

You’ll never again see lightning  
or smell ozone and petrichor --

\-- without also hearing the rumble of Takashi Shirogane’s laugh.

When it storms, you get the sense something is out there  
purring like a wildcat in the desert. Maybe you’re going mad,  
but you swear it promises he won’t be gone forever.


	4. scouting

At first you were aimless.

You were a tumbleweed, a dust-devil;   
you went where the wind blew.

For a while, it was nice to be that mindless,   
rendered, by grief, to essential elements:    
little more than animal instinct, meat, bones,  
and a white-knuckled grip on the throttle.

Except your problem’s always been  
that you think too fucking much,  
and the radio static in your head,  
well, lately, it’s gaining ground;  
it prowls, you think, like a puma --   
\-- some big cat, preternatural,  
currently staking out a territory  
in the depths of your subconscious.

You ride the bike out to the scar in the horizon,  
answering the canyon’s call over and over again. 

You develop climber’s callouses  
on sandstone pillars of red, red rock.  
You break more than one finger  
descending dangerous, jagged cliffs. 

You find chapels of stone  
left alone, it feels like, for years. 

Centuries, maybe.

It gives you a purpose.

Perhaps it’s because you’re not allowed to look in space.  
It’s certainly crazy to think that you’re going to find him here,  
hidden away -- and kept safe --  in some ancient, secret place.

Which is why you don’t think it.  
Instead, you feel it --   
\-- and that might be worse. 

Only when you find the first markings, do you remember:  
your feelings are what led you to him in the first place.


	5. rest

In the battle of Keith Kogane versus   
that can of baked beans,  
the beans won. 

It’s a combination of your bargain-bin diet   
and the late-summer heat that really does you in,   
renders you a miserable, puking mess.

You haven’t been shut up indoors like this  
since your time at the Garrison,  
and that life doesn’t belong to you anymore.

You’re a wild thing now,  
almost like those released,  
rehabilitated animals.

And although you’ve been made  
lean and strong and bronze  
by hard plateaus and hot, hot sun,  
you’re not really fooling anyone:  
  
They let you out,  
their best pilot,  
with clipped wings.

There’s nothing you can do about it,  
just like there’s nothing you can do  
about the food poisoning, except maybe  
to sit, shiver, and scowl at your circumstances.

Six hours in, that brain of yours does you no favors.  
You just don’t know how to give it a rest --  
\-- here you are in your living room, even now,  
you and your one hundred and two degree fever,  
compiling newspaper clippings together,  
crafting constellations on your wall.

It’s a network of string, and pushpins, and tape;  
it’s also your absolute refusal to quit while you’re behind.

When sleep finally comes, it comes for 14 hours.  
\-- you’ve gone crazy, you’re sick, you’re exhausted.

And you’re also  
getting closer.


	6. horizon

Your entire life has become about him.

It’s not the first time you’ve been shattered;   
and there’s no excuse for it, now,     
especially not after you fashioned yourself   
so strong, so defended, so immune   
to exactly this kind of devastation.

Except that you’re also Keith,   
alone in all the universe,   
and he’s also Shiro,   
singular as the north star.   


_ Ward of the State  _ was first to teach you   
about the terrible power words have,   
the way they can rip through a life   
like the sharpest of your knives.   
but nothing, absolutely nothing,   
has prepared you for  _ Pilot Error. _

You have made the walls of your home   
into a labyrinth of possibilities,   
and the voice you listen to --

\-- the one that keeps you moving,   
somehow, against all odds,   
may very well just be denial,   
or perhaps the refusal of a madman:   
who looks up at the night sky,   
and dares to tell the universe --    
  
_ No. You can’t have him;  
_ _ you can’t have  
_ _ my one last  
_ __ bright thing.


	7. free

It’s you and Shiro and the bike.   
Just like things used to be,   
except for the way    
everything’s different now.   
  
Even after all this time,   
he’s still looking at the stars.

You are listening to him breathe,   
because every rise and fall of his chest   
Is a miracle that you manufactured   
with your own bruises, blood, and bones.

“Did you think we’d ever make it back here?”

“I saw it, once,” you tell him.   
You saw a lot of things   
in that unbearable light.

_ I saw this. I saw us. _

Usually, both of you hesitate   
around the edges of that fight,   
but this time you don’t.   
  
This time, you say:   
“I think I needed to see it.”   
  
You’re not sure you could have done it,   
not without the one image affixed in your mind:   
You and Shiro lying side-by-side like this,   
with only the sky and the untameable desert   
to bear you both witness.

You’ve only barely explained yourself,   
but somehow he knows; he turns over,   
and he looks at you that way he does,   
like you’re something truly singular,   
unique in all the galaxy to him.

“I don’t,” he says, without being dismissive --  
\-- envious, maybe, of the future you got to see,  
but as sure of you as he’s ever been.

“You would have found a way,” he says.  
You want to ask him  _ why,  
_ but he already has the answer:

“Because you’re  _ you _ ,” Shiro says.  
And even after all this time,  
you don’t still understand how   
someone like Takashi Shirogane   
can speak of you with this --  
\-- this reverence, this  _ awe. _

You want to tell him  
that it’s because he’s _him_ ,  
but he’s looking at you,  
and you’re looking at him,  
and these are all things  
that both of you  
already know.


End file.
